An AI Darth Vader chatbot voiced by a digital clone of James Earl Jones’ voice joined Fortnite on Friday and players wasted no time trying to break it. It took no time at all for them to get it to start cursing at them, but the controversial Star Wars experiment has yielded all kinds of other weird interactions as well.
Following the battle royale’s latest update, players can defeat Darth Vader on the map in order to get him to join them. Unlike normal NPC allies, however, this one can respond to voice chat with AI-generated responses in a digital clone of deceased actor James Earl Jones’ voice. Despite Epic Games quickly patching out expletives from Vader’s vocabulary, players have found other ways to slowly degrade the AI chatbot’s defenses and get it to say actual slurs.
Fortnite leaker Wenso has been datamining some of the code used to control AI Darth Vader, which is otherwise powered by Google’s Gemini model. According to his findings, Darth Vader isn’t allowed to engage in romantic banter, talk about gambling, or comment on V-Bucks. Epic also said it has guardrails in place to prevent AI Darth Vader from encouraging real-world violence, including self-harm. But that hasn’t stopped players from getting it to say all sorts of other wild things.
Disney may have thrown brand safety caution to the wind with AI Darth Vader, but it’s extra disconcerting hearing meme slop regurgitated by a renowned performer simply because he sold the rights to his voice to Lucasfilm. Here’s just some of the new canonical Star Wars quotes that decision has led to:
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